Revista de estructuras y construcción de acero

The environmental contour approach is used to model the buffeting response of long-span bridges with unclear turbulence parameters

Abstract

Askol Fenece

Long-span bridges are increasingly being used to cross longer passages in international bridge engineering. More daring bridge crossings, such as the Messina Strait and the Strait of Gibraltar, are being considered as experience and development progress. The Norwegian government intends to construct a continuous motorway along the country's west coast. A motorway like this would have to cross multiple fjords with extremely long-span bridges, displacing current ferry links. Many of the bridge concepts being considered are incredibly thin, such as floating bridges with spans up to 5500 metres and suspension bridges with major spans exceeding 3000 metres. The design stresses for these sorts of structures are governed by the buffeting response from turbulent wind loading, hence uncertainties related to the description of the turbulent wind field must be adequately handled because it has a substantial impact on overall structural reliability